Entrepreneurs

Sunday, March 06, 2011

I started my own business two years ago, attracted by the benefits of self-employment: control of my schedule and the ability to continue as a writer, instead of being "promoted" to editing. But somewhere along the way, my business started to own me instead of the other way around. New assignments and clients came flowing in, and I found myself interrupting vacations with work and stuck at my desk from the moment I dropped the kids at school to the second they walked in the door from after-care.

So I made a New Year's resolution to take advantage of the benefits of working for yourself. The disadvantages are all too evident and largely inescapable: difficulty turning off work when your office is at home, uncertainty around future revenue and uneven workloads during the year. I forced myself to get out of the home office for errands, school events and networking lunches during the day -- after all, this is the flexibility I was seeking!

And this past week, I traveled to my stepdaughter's home in central New York to spend an entire week with her while her mother was out of town. That's the ultimate perk of working for yourself: being able to unilaterally decide to move your base of operations to another state for a week without asking anyone's permission.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Many of us love our gadgets. However, as with many first-world consumption patterns, they don't come free of guilt. There are ongoing questions and challenges regarding the environmental impact of manufacturing computers and electronic gadgetry. And there are also concerns about the sheer amount of energy required to power these wonderful Intarwebz and all the geegaws connected to them. There's a reason big companies like to place datacenters near rivers (hint: hydroelectric power).

So, while we can all feel a smidge of anxiety knowing that every Google search we do and every email we send kinda' sorta' maybe sends a little puff of carbon dioxide into an atmosphere, that, in the immortal words of engineer Montgomery Scott CANNA TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS, CAP'n, another guilt-inducer is labor. Specifically, the labor practices used in the places that manufacture our pretty, pretty iPads.

Mike Daisey is an amazing monologuist, story teller, and solo performer. Last year I saw his show "The Last Cargo Cult" at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in D.C. and it was amazing. I have been remiss all these years in not seeing his earlier work. I also read the book he wrote about working at Amazon in the 90s called 21 Dog Years: A Cube Dweller's Tale. His most recent effort is a show called "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." Here's a snippet of a review:

In this freewheeling theatrical essay, he doesn't just hold Apple CEO Steve Jobs' feet to the fire. He doesn't just question the morality of capitalism. He forces theatergoers to take a hard look at the glowing screens in their pockets and ask where they came from and at what cost.

Only a true believer, a man who fieldstrips his MacBook Pro down to its 43 components parts to unwind, could be this shocked and heartbroken to find that the gadgets he adores, those glossy pieces of electronic sculpture known as the iPad and the iPhone, might have been produced under brutal working conditions in China. Eager to investigate for himself, Daisey traveled to Shenzhen, a city of 14 million people crammed together under a "poisoned silver sky," at a time when workers were hurling themselves off the roof at Foxconn, one of Apple's key manufacturers.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Mompreneurs have it made: they have a career, a family and they manage to keep everything perfectly in sync.

Well, not really. Olympic gold medalist Gigi Fernandez knows how it difficult it is. Since the age of three, Fernandez yearned to play the sport she loved most, tennis. Even though her parents knew she had a talent for tennis, her eye and hand coordination skills were very good, her parents resisted her begging for lessons until age 7.

Path to the Olympics

Never feeling forced to love the sport, Fernandez says she saw playing as the greatest time. "I was having fun; I was hitting against the wall when I was three and started taking lessons at 7, both my parents were players and when they went to play, I would watch and play."

Fast forward to the 1992 Olympics and Fernandez became the first Puerto Rican female to win a gold medal. She won gold again in 1996. Her ambitions didn't end there, however.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

If you were to ask me how I describe myself, in no particular order, I am: a mother, wife, doctor, sister, daughter, manager and friend. Each of these roles is first in line at least once a day as I contemplate the notion of work-life balance. I'm about to shift them around again, as I close my solo medical practice in search of more family time.

I love having three kids. I knew when I was pregnant with my second that I wasn't "done," with kids and I continued to feel that way despite his lack of sleep and refusal to eat. When I became pregnant with my third, I panicked. Although she was very much planned, I wondered, "What if it is another boy?" I struggle keeping up with the physical energy of our three-year old son, which calls to mind the Tasmanian Devil from Warner Brothers. Then I fretted, "What if it is another girl?" I can’t deal with the drama -- our six-year old daughter could write her own soap opera AND star in it.

At 38, I was tired, but I knew that I couldn't handle being over 40 and pregnant (I know a bunch of women who could and did, but I am not one of them) and I knew we wanted a third. (I negotiated it down to three -- my husband wanted four!) I obsessed for a while and had CVS at 13 weeks or so, followed my doctor's orders, took Pilates classes for the entire nine months and had baby number three in August: another girl -- more drama!

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

With the news that AOL and Arianna Huffington are teaming up to take over the Internet -- combining the Huffington Post with AOL's roster of Web stars including Politics Daily, Engadget and TechCrunch -- I couldn't help but feel a bit overlooked. One of my inspirations for starting CurrentMom was the Huffington Post, and I'd like to take the opportunity to point out to the AOL acquisitions team the many ways in which Arianna Huffington and I are alike.

We use our friends

A few years ago, when friends of mine started blogging for the Huffington Post -- for free -- I was shocked. These are experienced, talented journalists with insightful, powerful things to say, and they were giving it away. So that got me to thinking … if Arianna Huffington could elicit high-quality content without paying for it, why couldn't I? Thus, CurrentMom was born, just over two years ago.

I'm immensely grateful to my friends -- and the new bloggers we've added since then -- and very proud of the result: CurrentMom is immensely readable, never predictable and I regularly find myself in tears over an intimate emotion or universal truth that one of my bloggers shared. Granted, AOL just agreed to pay Arianna Huffington $315 million for the enterprise she built on free labor, and CurrentMom's advertising revenue hasn't even covered my expenses, but things can change!